National Strategic Protective Services LLC announced Monday morning that it now provides guard services at U.S. Department of Energy sites in Oak Ridge.
NSPS won the protective force services work under a five-year, $182 million contract announced in January. The company will guard the East Tennessee Technology Park, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Joe L. Evins Federal Building, and part of the Oak Ridge Reservation. [Read more…]
Friday was the last day for many employees at security company WSI Oak Ridge, which lost its contracts to protect federal facilities after the July 28 security breach at the Y-12 National Security Complex.
After 13 years of protecting federal facilities, WSI Oak Ridge has left the Secret City.
Friday was the last day for many employees at WSI, and the contract ended Sunday, spokeswoman Courtney Henry said.
Formerly known as Wackenhut Services Inc., the company once provided up to 1,000 security police officers and support staff at federal facilities that included East Tennessee Technology Park, the Joe L. Evins Federal Building, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Y-12 National Security Complex.
But WSI lost its contract to guard Y-12, a National Nuclear Security Administration site, after the July 28 security breach, and it did not win a separate contract to protect local U.S. Department of Energy sites, including ETTP, ORNL, the Federal Building, and the rest of the Oak Ridge Reservation. That contract was awarded to National Strategic Protective Services LLC, or NSPS. [Read more…]
David Martin
By David Martin, Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board chair
There is great uncertainty on what the looming federal budget cuts will be and what effect they will have on funding for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environmental Management, or EM, program at the Oak Ridge Reservation. We can be confident that budget cuts are coming. It is going to take a coordinated effort on the part of the DOE-Oak Ridge EM, regulators, and stakeholders to minimize the impact on current and future remediation projects, and on the men and women who carry out this work.
Right now DOE-EM is operating on a temporary six-month budget. This budget covers just the first half of Fiscal Year 2013 and is based on half of the FY 2012 budget. We should know soon how changes in the federal budget affect Oak Ridge EM for the second half of 2013. This still leaves the 2014 budget in question. [Read more…]
Robert Craig
Belinda Price
The U.S. Department of Energy appointed two new members to its Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board.
Susan Cange, deputy manager for DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, introduced Robert Craig and Belinda Price as the latest appointees at the board’s meeting on March 13. [Read more…]
Now mostly demolished, the former mile-long, U-shaped K-25 Building is pictured above. The site has previously been identified for possible inclusion in a Manhattan Project National Historical Park. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)
A bill to set up a Manhattan Project national park that would include Oak Ridge has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The bipartisan legislation was reintroduced on Friday in the U.S. House by Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings, a Washington Republican; Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Tennessee Republican; and Rep. Ben Luján, a New Mexico Democrat.
The legislation—H.R. 1208—would establish a Manhattan Project National Historical Park that would include facilities in Oak Ridge; Hanford, Wash.; and Los Alamos, N.M.
Tom Morris, B&W Y-12 vice president of projects, presents construction safety awards to Monica Lewis, Y-12 craft safety lead representative, and Kevin Adkisson, Knoxville Building and Construction Trades Council president.
(Submitted photos)
A B&W Y-12 construction team was recently honored for two major safety achievements: working more than one million hours without a lost-time accident and having no recordable injuries in 2012, a press release said.
The B&W Y‑12 Direct-Hire Construction team achieved the one-million-hour milestone in June 2012. By January 2013, the team had reached 1.4 million hours (more than 800 days) without a lost-time accident, the press release said. The team’s last lost workday occurred in September 2010.
Jim Haynes, B&W Y-12 senior vice president and deputy general manager for projects, called it “a superb accomplishment.
Tom Beehan
A group of local governments associated with U.S. Department of Energy sites has reaffirmed its support for a Manhattan Project national park.
Proposed through legislation in the U.S. Congress, the park would commemorate the Manhattan Project, the top-secret federal program to build the world’s first atomic weapons during World War II. The park would include Oak Ridge; Los Alamos, N.M.; and Hanford, Wash.
“We are thrilled to see this step toward making the new national park a reality,” said Steve Young, secretary of the nonprofit Energy Communities Alliance and mayor of Kennewick, Wash. “There’s no question that the story of the Manhattan Project and the contributions of the men and women who supported it are of high interest to the American public. This creates a real opportunity for our communities to share our collective history while realizing the benefits of the heritage tourism industry a national park is likely to create.”
Daniel B. Poneman
The federal funding cuts that went into effect March 1 could result in 1,400 furloughs or layoffs for U.S. Department of Energy contractors in Tennessee, an official said this week. The furloughs could start as early as April 1.
There could also be spending reductions of about $90 million for DOE contractors in the Volunteer State, DOE Deputy Secretary Daniel B. Poneman said in a March 5 letter to Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam.
Funding for contractors at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge could be cut by roughly $41 million, and more than 1,000 contractor employees could be furloughed, Poneman said.
On Saturday, Feb. 23, students from throughout the state of Tennessee descended upon Pellissippi State College’s Blount County Campus to compete in this year’s U.S. Department of Energy’s annual Tennessee Science Bowl competition.
Fifty-five high school teams representing 25 Tennessee counties answered competition questions covering broad disciplines including chemistry, biology, earth and space science, mathematics, physics, and energy. However, in the end, Summit High School from Spring Hill, Tenn. edged out their competitors to win first place.
The Tennessee Valley Authority and Babcock and Wilcox announced Wednesday a major step in their joint effort to build and test the nation’s first small modular reactor at TVA’s Clinch River Site in Oak Ridge.
TVA and B&W signed a contract Feb. 7 that formalizes the process toward the eventual submittal and Nuclear Regulatory Commission review of a licensing application for a B&W mPower small modular reactor, or SMR, nuclear plant at Clinch River.
Y-12 National Security Complex (Submitted photo)
A report released Wednesday said the automatic federal spending cuts set for March 1 would require furloughs at the Y-12 National Security Complex and a shutdown of the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The report was issued by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee.
It said Y-12 would have to furlough 700-1,000 of its 4,500 employees for up to six months, and there would be hundreds of layoffs at national laboratories, universities, research facilities, and private sector companies that rely on grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science for energy research, the report said.
B&W Y-12 historian Ray Smith, left, joins Lincoln Memorial University board of trustees chairman Pete DeBusk in front of the “Scientists Who Changed the World” exhibit in the university’s Math and Science Building. (Submitted photo)
Sharing information related to the early years of Oak Ridge is all in a day’s work for Y-12 National Security Complex historian Ray Smith.
Recently, Smith’s flair for historical detail was incorporated in a permanent display on the main campus of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn. Located in LMU’s new Math and Science Building, the display pays tribute to nuclear energy research and the subsequent creation of what is now the U.S. Department of Energy.
